Whatever may be the immediate outcome of the deepest and longest crisis that the country has ever seen, Brazil will never be what it was. It will be better or worse but will never be the same. The crisis has wrecked the credibility of the whole political system, destroyed the legitimacy of Congress, provoked a loss of faith in the Legal System and brought the people to know that it is not enough to vote and win four elections for the presidential mandate to be respected. In a word, whatever one believed that the country had as a Republic has now come to an end. What was supposed to be a democratic political system, will no longer survive. Either Brazil will build a solid democracy – in which case the present Congress, this Justice system, this media monopoly cannot continue to exist as they are now -- or the country will simply cease to live in democracy.

The Brazilian right-wing is show its face without euphemisms. Initially they alleged that this would be a project to "re-unify the country", supposedly divided by the governments of the Workers Party (PT). They counted on the loss of popularity of the Dilma government, on the support of the most conservative and disreputable Congress that the country has ever had, as well as on the scandalous and dishonorable role of the archaic media, to destroy the political democracy that we had and to promote an anti-democratic, anti-popular and anti-national government.

Very rapidly it became apparent that this was what was being denounced throughout the region: the project of restoring the failed model of the 1990s with Fernando Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, with a putschist and minority government, against the people, democracy and the country.

How can the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) make a pronouncement on any issue if it has remained silent in the face of the Coup d'état, put into practice under their noses and presided over in the Senate by its president, who supports all the brutal illegalities that are being put into practice? What is the point of Justice and an STF that fails to prevent a crime against democracy being perpetrated by the Congress? Rather there is complete silence, mixed with the shameful 41% increase of their salaries, publicly approved -- with photos in the newspapers -- by Eduardo Cunha, the most corrupt politician in the country, whose impunity is ensured only by those who should be punished, alongside many other members of the present government, including the interim president. There will be no democracy in Brazil without a Judicial System that is elected and controlled by the citizens, with fixed mandates and limited powers.

There will be no democracy in Brazil while it does not have a Congress elected without private financing and that does not represent lobbies elected by monetary power. A democratic Congress must be founded on a conditioned vote, in which the electors control those for whom they have voted, and who must be committed to a programme with a specific party.

In a democracy, everyone has the right to speak; public opinion cannot be fabricated by a few families, who impose their point of view on the country, as if they could speak in the name of the country, even when they have lost four consecutive presidential elections. No one should lose their right to speak, but all should have the right to express themselves; otherwise it is not a democracy, but rather a dictatorship of an oligarchic minority.

In a democracy, an impostor could not have assumed the presidency, even for an interim term, through a coup d'état, nor impose an economic programme that was defeated four times successively, (including twice when the coup-maker was in the winning list), with a programme radically opposed to the one that won. If this is happening, it is because democracy is mortally wounded, ignoring the will of the majority.

If the coup triumphs in the Brazilian Senate, it will be necessary to make them pay the price of the assault they are perpetrating:  for their projects to fail, for the lives of their members to become unbearable, for their band of thieves to be victims of ungovernability. It will be necessary to undertake occupations and resistance in all the spaces of the legitimate antidemocratic, anti-popular and anti-national government. 

An indispensable part of this democratic resistance will be to oppose any action against [ex-president] Lula, who represents the desires of the majority of the Brazilian people, as is shown by the opinion polls that the coup masters themselves have utilized to seek popular legitimacy. This will be the sign of whether democratic spaces survive or not. If they are thus able to armour their government and to constitutionalize neoliberalism, they will have definitively buried any sign of democracy in Brazil.  In this case, they will have the same fate as their predecessors, they will be overthrown, defeated, execrated and a new tribunal of truth will judge them and condemn them for a crime against democracy. They will be defeated by the people, by democracy, by the country, who will re-establish a true democracy in Brazil.

(Translated from the Spanish by Jordan Bishop)